Aluminum to copper dissimilar laser joint using stainless steel 316L bimetal

Dissimilar joints especially aluminum (Al) to copper (Cu) have been drawn enormous attention in recent years. Regarding to challenges of this joint, including high thermal conductivity and high reflectivity of these metals and significant chemical and physical differences of them, a study, which provide novel method with minimum mixing is needed. To overcome this shortcoming, a method is presented for dissimilar joining aluminum to copper with stainless steel 316L/Cu bimetal in this study. The method is included laser welding and laser material deposition processes for creating bimetal and attaching it to the base metal. The performance of provided method was investigate by considering geometrical and metallurgical characteristics of presented weld joint. It has been seen that the depth and width of the current weld were 2.33 times deeper and 1.35 times wider than previous studies. These geometrical characteristics are provided with low laser power, which leads to low-cost process. Moreover, since the fusion of aluminum and copper was avoided, a ductile weld with mechanical properties was formed.